Review of "The Only One Left" by Riley Sager

 

Title: The Only One Left
Author: Riley Sager
Release date: June 20, 2023
Rating: 3.5/5
Publisher: Dutton
Book Summary: 

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife

Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said

But she’s the only one not dead

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

Review:

The Only One Left takes place in a small town in the 80s where our main character, Kit, has had her left completely up-ended by the accusation that she killed her mother. While she was acquitted of all charges, the lingering accusation weighs on her shoulders. In order to get her job back, she is given a proposition she can't refuse: taking care of the notorious Lenora Hope. 

I read this book with a book club, and it is one of the best book recommendations I've had. It was a difficult read to put down with every page revealing juicier information than the last.

Riley Sager has an incredible way of delivering information using interludes typed by Lenora to deliver the information. It creates a dynamic experience: we're reading the book from Kit's perspective, but also from Lenora's. As Kit helps Lenora type each page, we get more and more information on what happened before and during that fateful night. 

Hope's End felt like another world--like it existed outside of the already existing town. It felt all-encompassing. With every twist, the world felt smaller and smaller. More intertwined and more convoluted.

The only reason why I wouldn't score this above a 3.5 or a 4 is the loose ends that I felt were left toward the end. There was a character whose story didn't feel as complete as the others, while another character was heavily involved but not mentioned again past a certain point.

 

Still, I think it was an incredible read, with an unreliable narrator and an even more unreliable group of characters surrounding her.